The Legacy of Ludovic Grant

Book excerpt: A non-fiction biography about Ludovic Grant, Gent., born near Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1688. As a Jacobite warrior in 1715, he was captured along with 1,500 other Scotch Highlanders at Preston, England, and imprisoned at Chester Castle for six months. His trial resulted in banishment to Charles Town, SC, in 1716. After serving as an indentured servant for seven years, he became a licensed trader with the Cherokee Indians in Tennessee and married a full-blood Cherokee woman. His letters to Gov. Glenn of South Carolina from 1751 to 1756 preserved in South Carolina archives served to alert colonial authorities of affairs in the Cherokee Nation and French aggression in the colonies. As the ancestor of thousands of mixed-blood Cherokees, his legacy has continued to this day throughout the Cherokee Nation and America. Through his marriage and marriages of his three mixed-blood granddaughters to English and Scotch colonists his legacy has resulted in a heritage to those who trace their roots to a man who left his country for a new life in America three hundred years ago.